Buch Soham Jayesh
For over 6000 rich languages globalization has posed fatal threats. Moreover, a language has come into practice that contains mixture of different languages. In a way, words are losing their traditional meanings. The new “language” words have a different contextual meaning. This has created a chaotic condition in the world of pure language practices. It has become bare minimum to know the mother, national and an international language to be connected with past, present and future. In such scenario, there have been challenges for the language enthusiasts such as students, young aspirants – for whom the language could be a way of generating professional income, the language professionals and; last but not the least; the audience who likes to consume such language. The students are getting distant from their mother and/or national languages in the blind race of reaching to the earning power. Young language aspirants are forced to shift to popular foreign languages to maintain their competitiveness and increase their income. The language professionals find a very hard time as the machine learning and machine based translations are putting their business is in jeopardy. The creativity and originality of the language practitioners are at risk. The morality in the language professional practices are also taking a nose dive in the survival race. The audience is also driven by the trend rather than their personal choices on many of the instances. Though the picture created looks scary we would delve in to the alternate options for the language professionals to help the society see how they can thrive and add value in the modern competitive market.
Language professionals work mainly in two fields:
- Literary
- Non-Literary
Such work may be of two types:
- As an employee
- As an entrepreneur
Professional Options for Literature Aspects of a Language
Despite the popularity of some of the foreign languages, the influence of the local language in their region remains firm. This is specially seen for the literary works. The following points provide an insight as to how a professional with literary skills in a language can gain professional exposure.
Working for a publishing house – The publishing house that makes to publish literary works in many languages need professionals with literary skills for their projects. Here the idea is to see linguists as if they were story tellers, translators, artists, and poets et cetera. Language professionals can work with such publishing houses as an intern or an employee; if they are novice in the field and want to gain knowledge about the profession and how it works. During their job, they can learn about the area where work can be available, marketing, time management, the way to deal with the client needs and handling work with a professional attitude. This may help them in deciding their area of specialization such as stories, novels, plays, translation, poems et cetera.
Woking as a language entrepreneur – Alternatively a language professional may choose to work as an entrepreneur. The tasks of marketing and promotion are many a times handled by the professionals themselves. However, at times they allot the marketing companies or agents the tasks of promotion, advertising, networking and marketing et cetera; so that they can focus on the main tasks of the literature work.
Professional Options for Non-literary Aspects of a Language
Though literary aspects are very important, for any language the non-literary aspects are equally important from the view point of a language professional. In rapidly changing world providing details of reports in various languages is very important. Whether for art, social issues, technological updates, or the scientific breakthroughs, the language professionals may be assigned the role of translator, reporter, mass communicator et cetera. Many-a-times it constitutes an invaluable task of a translator between two country meetings that are critically important. With print, audio and video options available language professionals have higher chances of market penetration.
Legal matters and their interpretations are some of the undoubtedly vital aspects for the language entrepreneurs as the same needs to be conveyed to the needy and the professionals. To support the society, providing the access of the technical jargons related to various industry and areas of work, to enable the masses to get benefit of the specialized knowledge the inputs of the language professionals are required.
Many-a-times such works are provided by the organized institutions that have been recognized for their quality and efficiency by the society at large. However, there are sufficient opportunities for the entrepreneurs to cover the market share with timely reporting and delivery with professional efficiency and smart client handling. Further, the modern time is that of aggressive marketing and reaching to the target audience. That may be done through blogs, research articles, radio and video channels, images, or other options of mass media. Language professionals have stronger hold on such areas as they play a key role in keeping the audience interested and get desired results out of it for their or any others’ businesses. Furthermore, with the rise of the networking websites and its popularity, the chances of working in a cartel and providing work to the members continuously has also been established as a practice by some of the professionals. Various clubs and groups have also been formed that work towards a predefined objective. By providing their support to such group members and take advantage of the specialized skills by some of the members, focus on their area of expertise, and add further to the overall value of the group.
Concluding Thought
On many instances, the language professionals are taken very lightly and neglected due to their insistence of being specific. However, many forget that they are wordsmiths that can manipulate the language and reshape the fabric of reality. These mystical experts could draw their power out of sheer nothingness and influence the time and space. For such silver-tongued paladins, who rely on borrowing power from their own words, entrepreneurship seems to be the way forward if they uncover their abilities, remain confident and preserve their spark.
